Competent and good are not synonyms. Smart and good are not synonyms. Evil and competent are not synonyms. Virtues are not all moral virtues. Bravery is a morally neutral virtue. It makes bad people worse, and good people better and without it all virtues and vices are nearly meaningless. Competence is morally neutral. It is […]

I’ve heard a lot of stupid stuff from bloggers and journalists who are speculating why it is that Trump will not go away as a candidate and why Bernie Sanders appears to be hotter than previously thought.

First, I’d like to say that to blame Trump’s rise or the disgust with Obama on racism is too easy. I’m sure there are some clueless bigots out there that are supporting Trump and hate Obama. But I don’t think that’s why Trump is popular, or why Bernie is popular either.

There are a couple of things I would pay more attention to if I were a left blogger (I still am, by the way. I might be angry woman but I’m not stupid). One of these things was summed up by Steve Carrell’s character in The Big Short in a monologue when he was watching the financial industry melt and contemplated what would happen next. He foresaw homeowners compensated, the government taking measures to put things right, new regulations, and bankers carted off to jail. Of course, none of that happened. The measures were insufficient and delivered without the urgency that the country needed. And there are still people, such as myself, who will pay the price of the country having a high overhead of experienced, talented, over-educated people on the job market for a very, very long period of time.

What Trump voters are reacting to is *someone* is finally not acting like a student body president, trying not to upset the bankers, giving lip service to ideas and then doing a half assed job implementing them. You know what I’m talking about. The country handed Obama his job on a silver platter in a time of crisis and gave him more than enough support in Congress for two years to do something. They wanted real change. He didn’t deliver on that.

Trump may be a narcissistic, malevolent asshole without a congressional cohort but at least he’s not playing nice.

As far as Bernie is concerned, that’s not really a surprise, is it? Even the worst of the worst right wing Fox News lover grew up in an America when labor was strong, retirement was a realistic goal with a full pension, and most people were able to keep a roof over their heads. Some of these people are under the mistaken impression that a party would have to be crazy to touch social security and that single payer health care sounds like a good idea.

That’s the conditioning that Fox hasn’t really been able to touch, in spite of the incessant fear mongering, islamophobia, hyper-religiosity, racism and misogyny.

It’s still really hard for me to step back into this after ’08…however, I had a thought today. What if Bernie were a woman, and Hillary were a man; would that change the way they are both viewed and talked about now? I think I’m going to start asking people that. Hillary did a great job tonight, I thought, and the audience was much louder for her. Bernie came off angry, repetitive, somewhat naive, and (I agree, ownaa) without specific plans for “change.” He doesn’t have African-Americans or Latinos (or women); he’s no Obama. He has also not really been attacked yet.

When someone says “X is no Obama”, that might actually be a compliment.
I lived thru 2008 and wasn’t at all impressed by obama’s speeches or so called charisma. He was and always will be for me a corporate executive who relied on finance industry money to crush his opponent using very sophisticated and expensive psychological manipulation. When he got into office, he did what his buyers wanted.
That’s Obama.
NO ONE should want to be like him.

I agee about Trurmp’s appeal. The media doesn’t get that at this point when they bash someone, it HELPS them. If they want to know how Trump and Sanders got so hot, they need to thank themselves in good measure.

If Hillary was a man, the race would be over already. Everybody would be all over her (um “him” if she was a man. This is confusing.) People would be talking about “his” experience, about how admirable it was that “he,” a man!, stood up for women, and “his” phenomenal debate skills, about “his” skill at organization, leadership, raising money. (All male politicians raise money from some kind of Big Business, including and especially corporate Obama, and only a few leftists, who are all here, considered it significant. She’s a mainstream candidate. That’s all.)

People would be willing to get enthusiastic about “him” instead of the reaction I see in way too many places. “Hillary? Really? Can’t we find somebody else? Anybody else? Bueller?”

And if Bernie was a woman they’d be tearing “her” to shreds worse than they did even to Sara Palin. He’s very visibly old! What could be worse? Who cares what he says!

I do. $15/hr- that would be a raise for me so I’m in.
Expanded SS for when I retire- I’m in
Medicare for all before I retire- I’m in
I’m hearing crickets from Hillary on the 1st 2. She’s against Medicare4all, wsnts to stick us with obummercrap

I stick by my lack of commitment this season but I am surprized by a couple of things.

I just don’t feel it fom Hillary. Certainly not her commitment to the ACA which was no improvement at all in my health insurance situation. She knows and we know she knows how much money people are spending on health insurance — it was in her health care plan back in 2008. So I know she knows the horrific limitations to Obamacare. She is very, very smart. And she actually ran a winnng campaign last time. What happened?

Bernie impresses me with his passion. But, I’m not getting fooled again (can’t count the presidential campaigns that have fooled me) … We’ll see. But I really, really love his commitment to universal healthcare for everyone. Bring it on.

“What happened” is a very interesting question. I have read that very shortly before the D-convention in Denver . . . that candidates Clinton and Obama were both summoned to the Bilderberg Society Meeting in Chantilly, Virginia. They were both quietly read the Riot Act and were both told what they would do and how it would be in order to advance the Bilderberg OverClass Agenda. I have never seen these reports followed up in any genuinely meaningful way.

But some datapoints in there can be proven true or false. If it is true that the Bilderberg Society was meeting in Chantilly Virginia, and it is true that Clinton and Obama both went to Chantilly at the very same time, then the theory above is the best and simplest Occam’s Razor explanation for why they went there. And it would explain “what happened to Hillary”.

I don’t have TV anymore, for various embarrassing reasons of personal laziness and inertia, etc. I mean . . . I still have my old TV SET. It just isn’t hooked up to anything anymore. But I still like to turn on the radio and listen to it while I sit facing the TV set and looking at it. That way I can tell people that I still watch TV if I feel like telling them that.

So I heard a couple snippets about the debate on BBC news. The two candidates were tough and mean on eachother. Which is good. That’s what debates are for. Hopefully they will sharpen eachother up as they keep fighting it out down through the primaries.

I was very disappointed to hear Clinton enthusiastically support Obamacare as being President Obama’s “greatest achievement”. To me it is one of his greatest “decomplishments” ( to borrow the word coined by John Stewart) along with “look forward not back” and immunity and impunity for FIRE sector perpetrators and conspiring with Boehner and Reid and etc. to make the Bush Tax Cuts permanent
And etc.

Sanders is said to have a website. If so, maybe he is specific on it or will get that way. About numbers . . . I don’t know the numbers but one set of real numbers I would look at would be the sum total of all the private profit health insurance company premiums paid for in America. I would then make the best estimate I could of what all the taxes to pay for CanadaCare would cost if we legislated CanadaCare here in America. The most simple minded way I can think of to do that is to see what the taxes for CanadaCare cost in Canada, and then scale that number up to what those taxes would cost for an America-sized population on CanadaCare. If all the CanadaCare Taxes added up to less money than what all the private profit health insurance premiums add up to now, then I would see a brazenly simple-on-its-face case that CanadaCare For America would save us more in forced-premiums than what it would cost us in forced taxes. That’s a set of numbers I hope the Sanders campaign campaign decides to find and work up, and then talk about in the very plainest way.

I also KNOW . . . because I HEARD her say it recently, that Clinton STILL supports a “no fly zone” against the Legitimate Assad Government in Syria. I don’t know what Sanders really thinks about that. Does he even know? If he can bring himself to understand that where Syria is concerned you are either with Assad or you are with the Terrorists, and if he decides to be with Assad against the Terrorists, then he will be in a position to ask Clinton why she supports the Terrorists against Assad in Syria. But he can’t say that if he doesn’t understand the stark binary reality of the choice in Syria.

About Trump, I will just repeat my suspicion that his appeal reaches farther than just the White Racial Nationalist Grievance vote. It also reaches the “burn this mother down” vote at the very least. And I recently heard an Evangelical Minister interviewed on NPR saying that he and some others were leaning towards Trump because Trump struck him in private meetings and public view as being more authentic. Cruz seemed very polished and insincere by comparison. What that Minister said was that “I have been preaching for 25 years and I can tell when someone is showboating”. I know I predicted that if Trump conquered the nomination from an unwilling Republican Party, that Cruz would be his VP. But now I have trouble believing that Trump could stand being anywhere near that smarmy fakey Preacher’s Boy that calls itself Cruz. So a biggest-delegate-block Trump would cause even MORE trouble at the convention.

Sanders if elected, it won’t be for foreign policy knowledge (and I am not sure I care) … He said last night (broad paraphrasing) that we all agree that Assid is a bloody dictator who gassed his own people (this is my sense of what he said, not a quote) … R and I looked in astonishment and said, We Do?

From what I’ve read, there is a lot of question about that….

The Bilderberg Society. I have never heard of them. What will they do with Trump and Sanders? Seriously. What is going on?

Really? Sanders said that? “We all know that Assad gassed his own people.” Really? They all seem to shrink on you the longer you look at them. The various posters and guest posters and commenters at Sic Semper Tyrannis have discussed at great length and detail the whole constellation of facts indicating that the best theory of the “gassing at Ghouta” is that the Erdogan regime in Turkey prepared the gas and sent the gas to its proxies in Syria to use in a false flag attack designed to look like Assad diddit. But it didn’t work. Only the MSM and the mainstream candidates including sad-to-say Sanders keep saying that Assad diddit.

The Bilderberg Society is another one of these bete’ noirs among us of the Tinfoil Set. It is a bunch of very rich and powerful people and certain promising servants they groom for advancement to carry out the Global OverClass agenda. Just like the Trilateral Commission and the Council On Foreign Relations and the Bohemian Grove and Davos and so forth. All these groups are known to exist but they all claim they are just social gatherings of wine-and-cheese fanciers who get together to have their innocent little fun. The Bilderberg Society is supposed to be the most powerful and secretive of them all. For many years, its existence was denied. Now that its existence can’t be denied anymore, its importance is poo pooed.

Clinton and I think, I agree with most of what she said. But where I think we do have an honest disagreement, is that in the incredible quagmire of Syria, where it’s hard to know who’s fighting who and if you give arms to this guy, it may end up in ISIS’ hand the next day. We all know that.

And we all know, no argument, the secretary is absolutely right, Assad is a butcher of his own people, man using chemical weapons against his own people. This is beyond disgusting.

But I think in terms of our priorities in the region, our first priority must be the destruction of ISIS. Our second priority must be getting rid of Assad, through some political settlement, working with Iran, working with Russia.

But the immediate task is to bring all interests together who want to destroy ISIS, including Russia, including Iran, including our Muslim allies to make that the major priority.

Priority number 2 is getting rid of Assad? Well at least he considers priority number 1 getting rid of ISIS.

I would say that priority number 1 includes getting rid of every trace of rebellion in Syria no matter who it is. And priority number 2 is keeping Assad IN power more strongly than ever, so that the forces of rebellion can be kept crushed and destroyed for the next few decades.

But there are tantalizing hints from the Russia side and others that it is recognized that the physical person of Bashar al Assad may be too distasteful to stay in power. He has been offered comfortable retirement anywhere he wants in the huge and beautiful Russian Federation for himself and anyone else who wants to join him. The R + 6 will then work on creating Assadism without Assad. Perhaps there will be elections. Perhaps Assad himself will be permitted to run in them. What if Putin were to lead the R + 6 in inviting Carter and the Carter Center to run a totally clean free and fair election? What would people say if Assad were to win a Carter-certified election?

That’s what he said. But I think he’s really focused on domestic stuff. I haven’t decided how to vote on that foreign v domestic thing. Which is one reason I am staying out of it this year. But I am firmly in favor of a liberal platform led by a real universal healthcare committment. I don’t consider it to be a joke at all.

to ask Clinton why she supports the Terrorists against Assad in Syria.

Because when it comes to foreign policy, Hill is a neon-con. And the neon-cons wants everywhere to be like Libya, an ungovernable hell hole. Assad is in the way.

The terrorists in Syria.that we keep arming, training and supplying , were suppose to finish Syria awhile ago as they did Libya and then move on to southern Russia. But those slug a beds dragged their feet so long, Russia had time to legally come to Syria’s aid and bomb the terrorist’s supply lines from Turkey .(Where the hundreds of white Toyota trucks come from ) and Russia also bombed their oil convoys on their way to Turkey. A no fly zone is meant to protect those terrorists supply lines and oil convoys. That’s what its for

I neglected to add that the foreign nation in question wants chaos in the Middle East, so no neighboring regime can interfere with its territorial expansion and its murderous expropriation of the native people.

Well a number of nations want chaos in the ME. We, the Gulf States and the nation you have eluded to , plus our vassals , Egypt and Jordan. etc. Washington wants a world where one can pay off a few war lords to keep folk in line. The strong man era, when the Assad guys were golden , is seen as a too expensive way to go because you have to share the loot

I have a feeling . . . just a feeling now . . . . that IF the R + 6 are able to get every last trace of rebellion exterminated in Syria, that al Sisi of Egypt will recognize the Assad or post-Assad successor government pretty fast and hard. I think that al Sisi of Egypt wants order in Egypt and order in the Middle East. If he sees order re-emerge in Syria, he will support that order very fast and very hard.
Events will prove me right or wrong in the next year or so.

Bernie if he knows how specifically accomplish what he says he want to do, he is not telling anyone. That is on the economic side. Finally he got out the health plan which turn out to be the same as his failed 2013 one. It’s very costly to middle and poor people than Obama care. Read the details. Hillary acknowledged the limitations of the ACA but she she we will use it as base to build on instead of abolishing it and start all over again. As foreign policy it will be helpful if we start to think not everything is up to us in the world.

But the problem is it’s not 2.2 %. It’s more like 9% that it is going to cost you because what do you wanna bet the employer is not going to pay the tax and make you play it. What he is proposing fell apart in Vermont the most likely place for it to work. If it can’t work there I don’t think it’s workable anywhere in the country. The best option right now is to open up Medicare to more people.

The problem is that Obamacare is designed to preVENT any expansion of Medicare. The long range goal of Obamacare is to destroy Medicare completely, voucherise the wreckage and private-profitize the revenue streams into Obamacare, in order to make sure that we can NEVER escape from Obamacare and that the ongoing forced-mandate bailout for Big Insura is made permanent and eternal.

The pharmaceutical industry is the 2nd largest/richest lobbying group in the U.S. You can bet they will never, ever go for single-payer. Hillary knows that, learned that in the 90s. We are lucky to have gotten ANYTHING. Bernie is touting fantasy. There’s what we WANT and there’s what we can make HAPPEN, and in this country, those are two different things. Reality is reality.

As horrible as the Communists were, I must admit they served one useful purpose: they scared the Malefactors of Great Wealth into allowing a modest welfare state for the common citizen, to diminish the possible attractiveness of Communism.

The Commies themselves did the lion’s share of diminishing the attractiveness of Communism, of course, by setting up one-party police states featuring massacres, gulags, compulsory atheism (Marx made a hideous strategic error in embracing the fashionable intellectual atheism of his day, forcing all existing–and still powerful–religious institutions to become anti-Marxist to survive), a quantity and quality of consumer goods which provoked bitter laughter, and general dull gray conformity (the true color of Communism is not red, but dishwater gray).

Once the MOGW realized they could bamboozle enough Murkans into voting their vacuum-skulled prejudices rather than their practical self-interest, the MOGW began rolling back the protections for the common citizen with all possible speed. 👿

Above, I said “welfare state for the common citizen” to distinguish that from the welfare state for the rich, aka “crony capitalism”, which still thrives. Cynic that I am, I think all capitalism of any size is at least partially cronyist. If you want a really free market, you have to go to the flea market. 😉

Certainly the power of Big Pharma would have to be crushed. The power of Big Insura itself would have to be crushed as well. Big Insura itself would have to be all the way exterminated because Big Insura produces exactly nothing whereas at least Big Pharma produces drugs.

Sometimes analyzing and naming the present state of reality can be a first step towards re-engineering it. Perhaps the serious rise of candidates Sanders and Trump might be a present day ghost of “Communism past” which could scare and disorient the OverClass enough to where they might lose their total grip over picking reality.

Here is a copy-pasted comment from Naked Capitalism’s most recent Lambert Strether Water Cooler. It purports to describe a Clinton method of campaigning which will be very typical in the months to come.

rich
January 19, 2016 at 2:22 pm

Hillary Blames Bernie for an Old Clintonite Hustle, and That’s a Rotten Shame

The Clintons have no shame, that much you can count on. That stupefying arrogance was on full display in the most recent presidential campaign debate when Hillary Clinton countered Bernie Sanders’ charge that she was compromised by her close ties to Goldman Sachs and other rapacious Wall Street interests with the retort: “Sen. Sanders, you’re the only one on this stage that voted to deregulate the financial markets in 2000, … to make the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission no longer able to regulate swaps and derivatives, which were one of the main causes of the collapse in ’08.”

Hillary knows that the disastrous legislation, the Commodity Futures Modernization Act (CFMA), had nothing to do with Sanders and everything to do with then-President Bill Clinton, who devoted his presidency to sucking up to Wall Street. Clinton signed this bill into law as a lame-duck president, ensuring his wife would have massive Wall Street contributions for her Senate run.

Sanders, like the rest of Congress, was blackmailed into voting for the bill because it was tucked into omnibus legislation needed to keep the government operating. Only libertarian Ron Paul and three other House members had the guts to cast a nay vote. The measure freeing Wall Street firms from regulation was inserted at the last moment in a deal between President Clinton and Senate Banking Committee Chairman Phil Gramm, R-Texas, who had failed in an earlier attempt to get the measure enacted. Clinton signed it into law a month before leaving office.

Sanders soon figured out that he and almost all other Congress members had been tricked into providing a blank check for the marketing of bogus collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps made legal by the legislation, of which a key author was Gary Gensler, the former Goldman Sachs partner recruited by Clinton to be undersecretary of the treasury.

Eight years later, when President Obama nominated Gensler to head the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, it was Sanders who put a temporary hold on the nomination, stating: “Mr. Gensler worked with Sen. Phil Gramm and [former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman] Alan Greenspan to exempt credit default swaps from regulation, which led to the collapse of AIG and has resulted in the largest taxpayer bailout in U.S. history.”

Today, Gensler is the top economic adviser to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

Who are these Clintonites who now have the temerity to blame Sanders for the economic hustles they authorized?

I think the Naked Capitalism posters and commenters would all say . . “liike Obama HAS. . . even MORE so”. I think they would say that Obama is a Reaganoid Clintonite. In fact, I think they have said just exactly that, in millions of words, over and over again.

The folly of Hillary running on Obama’s record is that it ticks off her actual supporters, whose brains have not got down the memory hole and yet it does not gain her much support from the Obama voter who have always hated her guts perhaps even more than they loved Obama. But if she doesn’t toe the line, ‘ol bitter Joe Biden will come on The View to say harping stuff about her and the ladies will sorrowfully nod.

Well, in general, she has to. The public can’t handle nuance, and the press will run away with screaming headlines, none of which would be helpful to current issues. It will become a complete rehash of press 2008 narratives. No one needs that.

I think Hill has to run on his supposed wonderfulness and record because the powers that be want those policies to continue. Why wouldn’t they? Also a Obama shield is a way fend off Bernie some what. But it’s not enjoyable to witness.

I will most respect the officeseekers and etc. who decide to offer the public nuance anyway. The public’s survival is going to depend on the public being able to cope with nuance and so lets get started now.
Of course the CFP MSM will try to stupidize every trace of public discussion.

The irony for all of Hillary’s faults she’s not doing the unicorns and ponies thing. It’s Bernie that’s promising everyone that this time. I know the whole Obama hugging people bugs people and it does me too however Bernie is running a campaign straight from Obama’s playbook—promise unicorns and rainbows and don’t tell anyone the details.

Take financial services. Sanders advocates Glass Steagall & breaking up 2B2F Banks that exceed a limit on deposits relative to GDP. H Clinton hand-waves this issue, not wanting to offend her owners/campaing contributors, pulls a Giuliani & yells 9/11. Sanders is clearly vastly superior to H Clinton in details, as well as being honest/earnest/consistent.

BTW, isn’t it interesting, actually disgusting, that any Fed Gov expenditure that might actually help a 99%er, like MedicareForAll must be scrutinized to the highest level in terms of pay-for. The empirical fact of Canada paying about half of its GDP for healthcare as the US, having 3 yrs longer life expectancy, & over double the median adult wealth (CAN $80K vs USA $37K) is not good enough for the anti-MedicareForAll fearmongerers. But notice how there is NEVER ANY pay-for talk for US Offensive Imperial Optional Wars like Libya or Syria, 2B2F Bank$ta Bailouts, or for other types of Corporate Welfare.

His single payer plan was resoundingly laughed at even by his fans. To me Sanders sounds just like Trump only a little more specific. And Glass Stegall is not the problem. It’s shadow banking that is the problem. And he voted for that legislation. He’s had close to a quarter of a century in the house and the senate to get people to sign on to what he wants to do yet he never has been able to. He didn’t support Conyers bill where Conyers had done the hard work of rounding up votes for his single payer bill and got 85 people to sign on. Where was Bernie? He was nowhere to be found. Point this out and he whines and plays the victim just like Obama. It’s tiresome.

Because while she promises fewer and smaller ponies than Bernie, I think she stands a good chance of actually being able to deliver them, whereas poor old Bernie doesn’t stand a chance in Areinnye of being able to deliver his promised ponies.

Also, the growing similarities between Bernout behavior in 2016 and Oborg behavior in 2008 are annoying me. I only mildly disliked Obama, but I loathed the Oborg. I don’t dislike Bernie yet, but the Bernouts are scraping their fingernails on the chalkboard. 😛

One can separate the Bernouts from the Sanders campaign itself . . .and study what the Sanders campaign is offering and pursuing. Then too, there are probably any number of ordinary people following Sanders with interest.

And not to get too foily or anything, but some of the Bernouts might be false-flag black-advance hidden-hand Segretti-style Clintonites pretending to be Obots-for-Bernie in order to discredit Sanders by association. Their static will have to be cut through.

Here is my specific family reason for voting against Clinton. I have a relative in the armed forces ( no further specificity needed . . . loose lips sink ships). Clinton is overtly calling now and still for a forced No Fly Zone against Syria. That would require heavy military action to create and enforce. It would also risk war with Russia. That could all be bad for my military relative’s health, with no national defense reason to make up for it. Since Clinton wants to send my relative to war in Syria, I want to keep Clinton from being able to do that. And I will accept any number of nasty Bernouts along the way to focus on that personal family priority.

Yeah, as I mentioned above, Hillary needs to tell the neocons to STFU and GTFO. They are the same “geniuses” who gave us our [snark] glorious victories in Iraq and Afghanistan.[/snark]

It’s my turn to be foily here: I don’t think the Deep State will allow anyone who actually wants to dismantle the Empire of Capital to become Da Prez. Hence, if Bernie is being allowed an actual chance to win, it must mean that the Deep State has vetted him, and determined that he will allow the neocons to run his foreign policy if he somehow wins. Let’s not forget which ethnic group Bernie belongs to, and which country is the neocons’ actual country.

As always, please note I said “Empire of Capital”, not “Empire of the USA” or “American Empire” or anything like that. Capital is Sauron; Uncle Sam is merely the Lord of the Nazgul. 👿

Would Sanders’s JewEthnic background actually be predictive as to his response to the neocon agenda? I noticed recently that a commenter named Old Microbiologist on Colonel Lang’s Sic Semper Tyrannis blog who has relatives living in Israel claims to know that the Right-to-Far-Right Israeli majority strongly prefers Clinton over Sanders because they consider him far too “left” for their taste, whereas they consider Clinton a true neocon believer who really means it. Also the Israelis have not forgotten that it was Senator Senators who kicked off the boycott of Netanyahu’s appearance before the Joint Session of Congress . . . and who got some other Democratic Senators to join it. He also strongly supports the Iran Nuclear Control and Sanctions Relief Deal, which the neocons strongly oppose. So it appears to me that Sanders’s ethnic background lacks a certain measure of predictive power as to his actions.

About the OverClass Masters vetting a candidate before permitting a candidate to win anything . . . they have succeeded at that in the past. But it looks like Sanders and Trump are gathering support despite the OverClass’s best hidden-hand efforts to destroy their candidacies early in the process. I think one or the other of them could get elected despite the OverClass’s best efforts. The OverClass would then fall back to defense in depth . . .frustrating and obstructing every effort of a President Trump or a President Sanders to actually do anything.

Based on all that among other things, if Sanders is still in the primaries by Michigan, I will vote for Sanders. If Sanders has been driven out of the primaries by Michigan, I will vote for Trump.

(Since I spelled Israel and Israeli correctly, this comment may well go into keyword moderation. We shall see).

Sanders is running the Obama 2008 campaign all over again.
This time, Hillary is prepared with a strong ground game.
I did not fall for Obama’s overly polished bs campaign.
I am not falling for Bernie either. Both have the same professional leftist jackals behind them.

Exactly. I don’t know why people don’t see that Bernie is rerunning Obama ’08. All you need to do is go to Kos and you will see the same Obots spouting the same garbage they did in ’08 except instead of Obama it’s now Bernie.

I think it’s quite possible both Trump and Bernie started as fun plants that slipped the leash thanks to the overlords cluelessness of how bad it is out here. The Dems always put out some never to be elected left guy and the Repubs always put out an actor . This year they look pretty good, particularly Trump next to the rest of the GOP field…Lord! I suppose it’s so weak, cause it is, but also as a help to Jeb. How you you muff a fastball over the plate? By making it seem like you would rather be at the dentist getting a root canal than campaigning.

Jeb is an aristocrat, so he thinks he should be handed the reins of power as a matter of course. He finds it tedious, if not insulting, that he should actually be compelled to campaign for the Presidency.

That reminds me of how his dad, IIRC, was considered the early favorite to win the GOP nomination in 1980, and then the drugstore cowboy snatched it from him and Poppy had to settle for Veep.

2016 is not 1980, however. Reagan at least pretended to be amiable (perhaps he actually was; I’m not sure). The central appeal of Trump, to his Trump Chumps, is that he is an @$$hole and proud of it.

Indeed Jeb doesn’t get it. This is not being named to a board of directors. Everyone and thing can be in place and bought off , but you still have to seem to want to be out there with people , or its seen as rejection. Jeb has been doing the rejecting, the folk mirror back his ‘tude .

About the masses of Bernouts, Kos would be exactly the place to find such people. Moulos Markitzas worked very hard to build up a fanbase of bots who would support whatever Big Papa Kos instructs them to support. And will change their mind if Big Papa Kos tells them to change it. They are a personality type that he has recruited and fostered. Flaming Kossholes, Fecal Kosswipes, call them what one will.

I suspect Mister Kos is building brood chambers and laying thousands of Kos eggs in all the cells to breed up huge winged armies of Flying Kossholes to unleash upon the Internets when he feels the time is right. Kos would be just the place to see these people in action right now. One could still go to Naked Capitalism to see a better grade of Sanders supporter in action. Naked Capitalism may also be able to fend off the Kosswipe swarms when they begin attacking it.

Since a comment of mine never ran, I will try again with certain mispellings this time to avoid tripping the “erase” function.

One of Colonel Lang’s commenters over at Sic Semper Tyrannis named Old Microbiologist who has relatives living in Israyl says that the majority of Israylis much prefer Clinton to Sanders because they feel Clinton is much more reliably neoconservative from the heart. They note that Senator Sanders led the boycott against appearing at the joint Session of Congress where Netanyahoo was invited to speak. They are still upset about that. It would appear that basing predictions of Sanders’s reaction to neoconservatives on his JewEthnic background might be analytically unsound and leading to incorrect predictions of future Sanders behavior.

They also note that Sanders strongly supported/supports the Iran Nuclear Deal, which the neocons and Netanyahoo continue to oppose.
Colonel Lang himself started out supporting Sanders though his support is now leaning towards Trump. So I don’t feel a real risk of neocon behavior from Sanders based on his JewEthnic background. Colonel Lang certainly doesn’t, and he has long been deeply zioskeptical, to say the least.

So I am still satisfied that a President Clinton is much more deeply eager and committed to send my family member, and lots of other peoples’ family members, to war in Syria than a President Sanders would. Or than a President Trump would.

Sanders might carry Iowa and New Hampshire (New Englanders can usually win New Hampshire). That will merely make the race interesting to the media weasels.

The only reason Clinton lost last time was that the anti-Clinton faction of the Dinocratic Party was shrewd enough to pick a nominally African-American candidate to oppose her for the nomination, hence breaking the usual Clintonian lock on the AA vote.

Body: Last week I went down to Washington, D.C. to deliver a paper at a conference in the technical field where I worked, ten years or so and two or three careers ago, before the dot.com trash. The trip was solely an exercise in merit-making, since I doubt very much I'll get work in the field, but reconnecting with old friends was really great -- even […]

"Barrett Brown has been released from prison; WikiLeaks publishes to celebrate: Today, investigative journalist Barrett Brown has been released from FCI Three Rivers to a halfway house outside Dallas, earlier than initially scheduled. His parents picked him up from the federal prison to drive him six hours to his new residence. Brown's release come […]